


Tattoo You

by cyrene



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Everyone Needs A Hug, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ADAM PARRISH!, M/M, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 21:47:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15156287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyrene/pseuds/cyrene
Summary: Everyone has an opinion about the soulmate tattoo, but Ronan is the only one who's got one.





	Tattoo You

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to my cher bebe, Adam Parrish!

 

 

“When I’m old enough,” Gansey declares, looking up from the obscenely large book in his lap with great solemnity, “I’m getting the tattoo. The day I turn eighteen.”

 

Ronan believes it, and not just because of the wistful far gaze Gansey has going on when he says it. Gansey is as romantic as he is cautious – the only thing that might appeal to his sensibilities more than having a soulmate is being given the ability to find her.

 

Ronan gnaws on one of the leather bands he wears around his left wrist and makes a noise that could be a lazy scoff – ridicule on its day off. He thinks maybe Gansey is pining for a particular name on his wrist, and that is inexcusable.

 

“I hope her name is Mary Smith,” Ronan says through a mouth of leather.

 

Gansey shakes his head, because even he doesn’t know what to do about Ronan Lynch sometimes.

 

(But there is someone out there who _might_.)

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Ronan gets the tattoo a week after the cuts from his not-suicide attempt heal into scars. He has a fake I.D. he accidentally got by his father’s method ( _we don’t talk about that_ ) and he knows he can pass for old enough because he’s already used it to buy beer.

 

He drives up to Richmond, to a strip mall in the busy part of town. Ronan doesn’t think that destiny should come out of a strip mall. It seems cheap and tacky, like hanging fuzzy dice in the BMW. The building is painfully ordinary, though they do have a sign standing out front with a big red heart on it advertising soulmate tattoos for one hundred dollars.

 

A tacky little bell rings overhead as he throws open the glass door. Ronan has to fight a blush, of all the fucking stupidity, but he doesn’t hesitate. He already made the decision, and he is nothing if not stubborn.

 

Ronan can’t see anyone, but a voice calls from behind a half-wall that they will be with him in a second, so he wanders around looking at the designs on display.

 

“Here for a Celtic knot?” a young woman asks, leaning over the half-wall and gesturing to the poster in front of him. He shakes his head. “No, you’re here for your soulmate tattoo. You have that look about you. I.D.?” Ronan holds out the fake and she gives it a cursory glance. “Why are you here now?”

 

Ronan says nothing. When the silence becomes more painful than the truth he finally says, as if each word is being forcefully wrenched from between his gritted teeth, “I need to know there’s someone out there who can… love… all this. Me.”

 

The woman just nods. “All right then, Ronan Lynch, come sit back here on my bench. Ooh, I made a rhyme!” She seems very pleased by this.

 

Ronan feels an irrational surge of hatred, equally for her rhyming his name and forcing him to admit to his tender humanity, but he sits down anyway.

 

“I don’t know if you know the drill,” she says as she sets up her instruments, “so I’m just gonna run through it real quick. I use this special ink to tattoo a heart on your wrist, then you give it five minutes. Rest your left arm right here.” She pats the chair’s padded arm briskly, and begins cleaning Ronan’s wrist with a cold antiseptic liquid and a bit of paper towel. “If you have a soulmate, it’ll form their name. If not, the ink will disappear and no harm, no foul, no one needs to know. I wouldn’t worry too much about that, though, because I’ve done hundreds of these and only had three that didn’t work out.”

 

She stops, needle poised above Ronan’s wrist, and looks him straight in the eyes.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

Ronan doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”

 

“Are you ready?”

 

“Yeah.” Smaller, quieter, but still infused with enough obstinacy to be convincing.

 

“All right, then.”

 

She gets to work. It doesn’t hurt like he expected it to; really it’s more like a vibration that tickles and it doesn’t even take her five minutes to freehand a three-inch black heart on Ronan’s left wrist. When she finishes, Ronan has a brief moment of doubt in which he desperately hopes she isn’t some kind of con artist, because getting a giant heart tattoo on his arm… well, at least you can take a “Kick Me” sign _off_ at the end of the day.

 

Then something happens. The lines of the heart blur, and it begins to lose its shape, the ink swirling beneath Ronan’s skin in a cloudy haze. It continues like that for an endless minute before the haze begins to settle into a series of letters written in a fancy script.

 

Ronan lets out a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. There is a name on his arm. He was wrong – the proof is right there – and _there is someone out there_.

 

“Are you okay?” the woman asks gently, and Ronan realizes he is breathing too fast, too heavy. He takes a deep breath and nods slowly. “Do you mind if I write your names down in my book? I like to keep track of all the soulmate tattoos I do.”

 

Unable to even find the word for yes, Ronan just nods again, and the woman carefully copies down both Ronan’s name and the one on his wrist. Ronan watches as the names appear from her pen in loopy cursive: his, next to his _soulmate’s_. He rubs the name on his wrist, feeling an almost pleasant ache where the needles pierced his skin.

 

It feels like everything might be all right, some day.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

“I don’t believe in soulmates,” Blue says, like a queen condescending to give a proclamation.

 

“Then how do you explain the _names_ , Jane?” Gansey – little stars in his eyes and a song in his goddamn heart – wants to know.

 

“Well, for starters—” and, oh shit just got real, her hands are on her hips now, “I have never personally seen one of these tattoos done, so I can’t say for absolutely certain that anything happens at all.”

 

“But all the YouTube videos—”

 

“Can be faked, easily. I will say that the notion that there is one single person out there who is compatible for me, and none other will compare, is ridiculous. Love doesn’t work that way. Love is about the work you put into it. And I think it’s even more ridiculous that people are willing to pay a hundred bucks and more to find out just the _name_ of someone they _might_ be compatible with.”

 

“Hear, hear,” Adam mutters from Gansey’s desk, and his History textbook.

 

Blue startles, a look of surprise on her face that has more to do with her train of thought being interrupted than the source. “Do you know, Richard Campbell Gansey _the third_ , how many hungry children you could feed with a hundred bucks?”

 

Gansey frowns and shrugs. “Seeing as I have easily more than one hundred dollars, Jane, I don’t see why I can’t do both.”

 

Blue’s face turns an apoplectic shade of red and Ronan doesn’t even try not to laugh as she sputters her retort.

 

“I would do it, if I could,” Noah says in a quiet voice. “I would love to know if I had soulmate. I hope they’re not sad, without me.”

 

That insta-quells Blue’s indignant rage, and she lets Noah pet her hair with one hand while holding his other in both of hers.

 

“If anyone ever had a soulmate, Noah, I hope it’s you,” she tells him.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

It’s difficult to have to keep secrets from the people you care for, especially when you’re the kind of person who isn’t built to care easily, so you don’t have very many of them. (People, that is, not secrets.) It’s terrible to see a person day after day, growing towards loving them, working through the terror that comes with that… and to have them not even notice you in that way. It’s unendurable when one of your biggest secrets is that you have their name tattooed on your arm, hidden under five leather bands.

 

Ronan almost regrets getting the tattoo. Almost, but not quite. He wonders if he’s secretly a masochist, because even though it feels terrible, it feels terrible in a way that’s almost good.

 

Ronan is not built for wooing. He understands the concept, but not the implementation: he fumbles and misses so that “I want to spend time with you” becomes a series of scrapes and scabs, “I want to brush my thumbs across your cheekbones” becomes “You look like a loser…” and “I’m gonna give you a ride home” becomes “I’m gonna beat up your abusive fuckwit father”.

 

If wooing is like a flower, slowly opening to the sun, then Ronan is a bull, repeatedly head-butting a brick wall.

 

Ronan is _not_ built for wooing. He wishes desperately that he were, as he tries to think of ways to show his intentions that don’t involve violence or pathetic clichés like flowers and poetry. If he has to resort to flowers and poetry than he hasn’t earned it. (Also, the only poetry he “gets” is Catullus – not prime wooing material.)

 

So he fights his awkward nature and tries harder: “I want to spend time with you” becomes hanging out at St. Agnes all night, “I want to know what your mouth tastes like” becomes a light shoulder bump, and “I need to tell you about my first tattoo” becomes little presents, left without comment.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

“Because I already told you, I won’t _belong_ to anyone,” Adam hisses. His jaw is clenched and his eyes narrowed, and it _does things_ to Ronan that are completely contrary to the point of Adam’s argument. “Even if it’s for real, and even in an alternate universe where I have a hundred dollars to blow on something so frivolous, I still wouldn’t do it because I am not someone’s prize to claim.”

 

“I’m beginning to suspect,” Gansey says in the harshest voice he ever uses with anyone, “that you don’t believe in love at all.”

 

“Maybe,” Adam shrugs, and Gansey and Blue look shocked. “Oh, come off it, Blue, there’s no evidential proof of love either.”

 

“We’ll have to agree to disagree,” Blue says faintly. She looks like she feels very sorry for Adam, and that raises Ronan’s hackles a little. Adam’s too, obviously.

 

Ronan wonders if she’s thinking about the fact that they were dating until very recently. He is. Ronan is also wondering if it really matters after all whether or not he’s good at wooing, when the recipient of his affections is someone who cannot be wooed.

 

 

 

*

 

 

Ronan, having been raised Catholic, is accustomed to the notion of miracles and can view them with the proper reverence. This prior training has come in handy, since his life is now inundated with them.

 

Every day that Gansey lives is a miracle.

 

That Gansey and Blue have stopped arguing with each other long enough to suck each other’s faces on a fairly regular basis is a miracle.

 

Opal, a dream girl walking about in the real world, is a miracle.

 

Ronan is now friends with Henry Cheng, and that’s a miracle.

 

Adam Parrish is a miracle – full stop.

 

Adam Parrish, completely independent and without any tattoo interference, allows Ronan to kiss him, and returns the kiss in kind.

 

There is a mutual exchange of feelings – _of all the…!_ – going on there. It makes Ronan’s head fuzzy. It’s so much more than he could ever have conceived. At first, Ronan tries to make himself as still and quiet as possible, to keep himself from exploding all over the newness that is _Ronan-and-Adam_ and ruining it. That lasts about a week, until they get in an argument over something stupid, and he remembers that one of the best things about Adam is that he pushes back, and he expects Ronan to do the same, because he knows they can both take it.

 

They push each other. It’s an unspoken challenge between them, a dare kept in the secret shadows of their relationship, to see who will give in first and fold.

 

“I have an errand to run today,” Adam says in an almost bored tone. “Wanna come?”

 

They get out to the BMW, where Adam hip checks Ronan, pushing him into the side of the car, and holding out his hand. Ronan, in the least characteristic move he has ever made, hands his boyfriend the keys.

 

People who don't really know much about cars will say, “Drive it like you stole it!” and probably follow it with “Herp-derp!” or something equally stupid. Adam drives the car like it's his, which Ronan can appreciate, with care and familiarity, and a love for all its little quirks.

 

When they pull into the strip mall, Ronan goes very still in the passenger seat. Perhaps they are going to the Vape shop. Maybe Adam has taken up fake smoking? Maybe they are going for Chinese food. But hunger is not an errand.

 

Adam stops the car.

 

“I think you know,” he says, in the same way he drove the BMW, “that I have never seen the tattoo on your wrist.”

 

Ronan bites down on leather.

 

“I think I know what it is, though,” Adam continues, “and I want you to know that I wouldn't be here today if I didn't think they would match.”

 

Ronan breaths harshly through his nose, exhaling like a smoker.

 

“Do you want to tell me now, or should we wait to find out?” Adam says lightly. He is tip-tapping, tip-tapping on the gear shift with one finger.

 

Ronan looks at Adam's tanned wrist, perfect and clear and blank.

 

“Don't do it,” Ronan says suddenly. “Don't get a tattoo.”

 

Adam looks surprised.

 

Ronan fumbles for an explanation, for a verbal explanation of why this would be such a profanation, and all he comes up with is, “You're not a tattoo kind of guy.”

 

Ronan holds out his wrist.

 

One by one, Adam loosens the bands, letting them fall to the floor.

 

 

 


End file.
